


Beginnings

by CookiesAndKatanas



Series: Repo!Hats [1]
Category: Hat Films - Fandom, Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008), The Yogscast
Genre: Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 00:53:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13306953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookiesAndKatanas/pseuds/CookiesAndKatanas
Summary: A Yogs in Repo!verse crossover. Backstory of each of the Hat boys.





	1. Smith

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to get into Repo, but don’t want the visual gore, the soundtrack pretty much covers the plot. Go reference Wikipedia for the correct order of songs and the summary if you’re interested.
> 
> It’s not so much the plot that’s important to understand here, but the universe. The Repo!verse takes place in a dystopian futuristic society obsessed with genetic/health/beauty perfection. Somehow this led to organ harvesting becoming legalized because there weren’t enough regular transplants to go around. Also involved is the ridiculously addictive drug called zydrate, which is commonly used prior to a person’s surgeries. Street zydrate is illegal, but people called “graverobbers” draw it out of corpses with a syringe and sell it to addicts.  
> GeneCo = SipsCo, the leading genetic enhancement and organ repossession company  
> -Ghost
> 
> cws: minor character death, parent death, injected drug use/addiction, car accidents, mention of gambling, and setting content, mentioned above

     Smith, at heart, is a good person. He became a surgeon because the organ failure epidemic became a real problem when he was twelve or so. He’s old enough that he can remember a better time, and young enough to be idealistic about how he can help.

     So he grows up with one career goal in mind, and he though he loves music, he isn’t so naive to think he’ll ever really be able to be successful in it. So he applies for and receives the Sipsco surgeon scholarship, full ride, as long as he works at SipsCo when he graduates.

     Repossession is legalized his first year at uni, and he feels sick when he realizes he might be assigned to be a repo man, and he’d have no control because of the contract that came with his scholarship.

     He goes to the seedy part of the city, gambles on street races, and feels in control of at least where the generous SipsCo stipend goes. He starts going out whenever he feels too split on his morals and his family and his career and the contract he signed his life away in. When betting on races gets dull, he hits the fighting rings, then poker games in basements, then he goes back to racing, as a participant.

     He finishes his degree with good academics, considering how he spends his free time coping with the stress of the future.

     His schooling comes in handy when during his first year of med school, he’s in a race and there’s a five car pileup that he wrecks his car avoiding. Nothing on him feels broken, so he starts triage and saves two lives. Of the others, two were dead on impact, or at least, dead before he got to them, and the last was going to live anyway, only broken ribs and arms, none compound.

     He’s shaky, and when it’s all over and the others are away in the ambulance, the only thing running through his head is relief that he never thought he’d be cut out for the emergency room. One of the girls he’s known for a while in the racing circles presses a vial of zydrate into his hand, tells him he deserves it for all he’s done, it’ll mellow him out, it’s the least she can do.

     He considers refusing, the dangers of nonprescription zydrate running through his head, but he closes his hand around it anyway.

     His chest hurts in a way he can’t tell if it’s shock is constricting his lungs and making his breathing tight, or fractured ribs are making themselves known now that the adrenaline is gone.

     Smith injects himself later that night in his bedroom. He wonders why he never did this before, instead of throwing money away on bets and putting himself in danger with racing. His habit goes from once a month to weekly to daily with worrying speed, but he can forget about the implications of addiction and the blurred morality he’s bound to when he’s high. Every night he rides it until he falls asleep.

     He finishes med school, and makes a point to contact HR and say he’d do best in a surgical suite saving lives, not ending them on the streets. He says it wouldn’t be worth his education to make him a glorified butcher, and he doesn’t want his scholarship contract to be unfair to the company who gave society so much, who gave him so much.

     The brownnosing works, or maybe it didn’t and it was going to happen anyway, but he gets his wish, and moves to the opposite end of the city to be closer to work.

     He grills his old buddies about any dealers around, and he eventually meets up with Chris Trott. Apparently Trott has a legit job at night, so they have a small window in late afternoon where they meet up, grab post/pre work meals, then part ways. Its an odd way to interact with a dealer, but no one suspects two well dressed guys grabbing early dinner together to be trading drugs and money, so it works.

     Smith gets an offer to be promoted to repo man, as if it were an honor, as if he’d earned the privilege. He asks Trott what he thinks of repo men the next time they meet, and Trott goes strangely still and replies carefully, “Well, it’s like recycling, isn’t it? The organs can go to someone who needs them. I heard they harvest other workable organs, so it might save more lives in the long run.”

     Smith nods thoughtfully, but doesn’t take the offer for months, until his mom’s lungs start giving out. His salary goes to zydrate and other necessities, so he doesn’t have enough savings to help. The signing bonus and salary bump would be exactly what he needs.

     His mother doesn’t survive the operation.

     He takes two weeks off and spends it all high. Trott visits him and drops off more Z for him. Trott offers a listening ear, but Smith doesn’t really know what to say. The pain and the words to describe it seem distant and hard to grasp, so he just shrugs. Trott sighs, takes the money Smith laid on the table earlier when he was sober enough to count, and walks out of the apartment. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Over a year ago I came up with Repo!Hats, and [Ghost](https://ghostofgatsby13.wordpress.com/) poked me til I came out with these. This AU wouldnt have gone anywhere without them
> 
> I have a thread of all my repo!hats thoughts [here](http://cookiesandkatanas.tumblr.com/tagged/repo%21hats/chrono)


	2. Trott

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: same as previous chapter

     Trott didn’t grow up knowing his future like Smith. Trott grew up knowing the importance of money, knowing how crucial it was, and how not having it meant no breakfast or lunch, and wearing clothes until he couldn’t physically fit in them anymore.

     His mother had a heart attack when Trott was seven, and that doesn’t bother him much anymore, he doesn’t remember her well. His father’s lungs start going when he’s thirteen and he dies choking on his own blood five years later.

     When Trott’s own heart starts failing, he does what any 20 year old would do in his circumstances: calls it done and makes sure his affairs are in order for when his heart finally gives up.

     He worked odd jobs, loading and unloading down by the port, keeping the billboards in the air, washing dishes at a restaurant owned by his neighbors. The constant work gave him money to keep his head above water, but the stress was apparently too much on his body. He keeps course anyway, because if he babysits the neighbor’s toddler (aka sleeps in the same room as the kid plays with blocks or takes a nap) he can start building up savings, and savings means surgery.

     He’s walking home from the restaurant when he sees a zydrate deal going on in an alley. He quickly averts his eyes, not wanting to give the dealer reason to threaten or beat him, but his eyes are wide with sudden realization while he strides away.

     Getting set up is the hardest part. The right tools, the right connections, they’re hard to get. But actually harvesting, that’s the exhilarating part, the easy part.

     School wasn’t easy when he went hungry more often than not, but bodies had always fascinated him, how easily they broke down and made his life shit, made the world shit. Corpses were fun to study, he could learn on his own terms and whatever he couldn’t learn hands on, he could look up easily. But his priority was always the zydrate, and he got enough that he always had a buffer for when patrols cracked down every so often.

     Two years pass and Trott has a small, steady client base. Another two years and he gets a transplant, pays half of it upfront, knowing he can make the rest of the payments with how small they’ll be. The doctors tell him afterward that he was lucky to make it into his mid 20s.

     Another six months, and SipsCo guards find him studying a spinal cord. They also find the 27 freshly harvested vials of zydrate in his bag. Instead of killing him, they bring him to SipsCo tower, where he’s offered a job by Sips himself. He’s so shocked he accepts without a second thought.

     Sips invites him around more often than he thought he’d be, and they start an easy friendship. Trott is unsure if it’s to keep an eye on him, or because all repo men are this close to the ceo when they’re based out of this city. Trott eventually stops worrying about the why and just concerns himself with how fucking fun it is to relax and banter with him. Eventually Sips is just Sips, not Sips: CEO and Founder of Multibillion Dollar Organ Financing Company SipsCo.

     But Trott still has jobs to do outside that spacious office, and he was good at what he did. Everyone knows a repo man is asked no questions, and the same applies when he’s in a graveyard. He’s trained a little bit more, but for the most part, he knows anatomy well enough to start right away, and he abuses the power his uniform affords him. His salary and dealing keep him startlingly comfortable, and he can’t quite figure out what to do with all this  _money_.

     A year or so into his repo job, he starts scaling back his dealing. Alex Smith is the last customer he gave his contact info to, and while he slowly refers people to other dealers who helped him out years earlier, he can’t quite bring himself to do the same with Smith.

     Smith’s mother dies and Trott’s heart breaks a little, seeing him grab at the bag Trott brought for him as soon as the door opens for him, frantic with the need for more. His chest aches when Smith lies down, his eyes hardly focusing on him as he asks if he wants to talk about it. Smith mumbles some incoherent reply, and Trott wonders why he thought Smith was different than all the others.

     His dealing is scaled back enough that a week after the catastrophic visit to Smith’s, he decides to help train new repo men like he’d been asked to. He meets his protege in Sips’ office, and when the elevator doors open, he’s struck with the odd sensation that he must be dreaming. Smith is lounging on one of the couches, sprawled out like he always does at their lunches, laughing at something Sips must’ve said. Sips is leaning against an armchair upon which a repo uniform is lying.

     Trott feels an odd pang of jealousy in his stomach just as his chest swells with a sense of rightness at their laughter, and he steps into the room still half convinced he’s dreaming.

     Smith turns to him, hearing his heavy bootfalls, and his smile slides off his face in a moment. Sips stands and introduces them. Trott plays along, and Smith follows his lead.

     They talk when they leave the tower, out of view from Sips, who is really too smart to think that anyone believes his oblivious, laidback persona. Trott teaches Smith the parts of repoing that medschool never covered between stories of how they got to be repo men. They don’t fall into light banter like their lunches after Trott explains how to best corner a victim, Smith can’t seem to relax. Trott tells Smith he doesn’t need to be so delicate in harvesting, and Smith drops his tools into their target’s chest cavity and strides to the end of the alley, letting Trott finish the operation.

     They fall into routine, and every night Smith distances himself a little more from their marks, but even when Trott compliments or encourages him, he’ll stalk away.

     The first full procedure Smith does on his own is enough for Trott to call it for the night, and they get back to Smith’s apartment before 1am, and Smith invites him to stay the night. Trott reads the barely concealed tension in Smith’s body and accepts.

     Smith’s shower takes a full hour, but with how nice his apartment is, there’s still hot water left for Trott when he takes his.

     Smith’s bed is really too large, so they can share it easily. Trott wakes up at 5am to discover Smith crossed the line of personal space they made, and has Trott under his arm and their legs twined together.

     The swell in Trott’s chest reminds him of when he walked into Sips’ office and saw him laughing, reminds him of the stupid conversations they’d have about astronomy and geography over food, reminds him of their tense silence their first few nights repoing together, reminds him of just earlier Smith’s eyes couldn’t meet his. It reminds him of the countless times he could see the desperation in Smith’s eyes as his shaking hands loaded his injector.

     Trott doesn’t mind Smith’s sleep cuddling as much as he thought he would.


	3. Ross

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: same as previous chapters

     Ross’ family is relatively well off, but his father’s side of the family apparently has weak kidneys. He watches his father grow weak and leave the house only for work and doctors visits. 

     The ease and comfort of his childhood rapidly slides backward into notebooks filled with bills on the coffee table and using coupons at every shop they go to. It’s preventative, and though he doesn’t get a lot of things he wants in his teenage years, he never goes cold or hungry. 

     Both the family dogs die within months of each other, their stomachs refusing to digest anything anymore. It happens right before his last year of school, and he changes his university plans from visual media and film to veterinary.

     He works hard to get good marks in science classes he never thought he’d need, and gets no scholarships offered to him. His family can only help so much, so most of his tuition is paid with loans.

     He joins a practice not far from his parent’s place, so he doesn’t move out. With three working adults in one household, bills get easier to pay, and they order take out more often. 

     Years pass, one of the senior veterinarians in his practice retires, and his income and work hours grow rapidly. He starts to consider moving out. Even with his loans to continue paying, his family is comfortable and he could support himself.

     Of course, that’s when shit hits the fan. His father’s 53rd birthday is the same day he dies. Funeral expenses clear his mother’s savings, even though she doesn’t tell him outright. Her jewelry disappears, as do some of her finer dresses. Ross suggests they stop paying for cable, neither of them have the time for tv anyway. 

     He’s driving them to visit his father’s grave some months later when a SipsCo security van blows through an intersection, clipping the back of their car and sending them spinning. His seatbelt pulls painfully across his stomach and chest, but it keeps him in his seat. He clutches the steering wheel in a death grip, only concerned at the moment with steadying himself. 

     After a few moments that feel simultaneously like a few minutes and only an instant, the car slows, rocks on its suspension, and stills. There are no other cars on the road, and Ross looks over in relief to his mother. 

     There is blood on the passenger side window, and she is slumped against it.

     When they arrive at the hospital, he lifts his arms to change out of his clothes into a gown, and his whole torso protests. A gentern notices, and goes to help him, stopping as she sees the massive bruises spreading from seatbelt shaped stripes. He’s brought a contract, estimating the costs for fixing up the internal bleeding. He does quick calculation in his head and signs.

     When he wakes up after the surgery, a doctor comes in and explains his right kidney sustained considerable damage, they had to remove it, and from his medical records, knew he couldn’t live with only one. Ross, for the first time in his life, realizes what people mean when they say they could feel their face pale.

     His payments, thanks to the extra kidney, are triple what they would’ve been, and thanks to a neat portion of the contract accounting for this possibility, he’s obliged to pay. 

     He asks about his mother, and the doctor says her head injuries are extensive, but if she makes it to morning, there is a good chance of recovery.

     She doesn’t make it to morning.

     Ross has to stay in the hospital for a few more days, because if he rejects the kidney he will undoubtedly die. As much as he loathes his current position, he isn’t ready to tempt fate like that. His second afternoon there is when Sips, CEO and Founder of Multibillion Dollar Organ Financing Company SipsCo, comes into his room. 

     Sips offers him a job.

     He accepts. 

     He quits his job at the animal hospital then arranges his mother’s funeral, pays off half his student loans and his mother’s debts, all with the signing bonus alone. When he starts on the job, he joins another trainee and mentor pair, and they work well with each other.

     Smith tells him about his scholarship, Trott tells him he was recruited, and Ross tells them his story. Trott is nearly unbearably gentle with Smith, and can’t quite seem to turn around and treat Ross normally in the next sentence, so Ross is treated the same. He’s mildly uncomfortable with it until he does his first operation. Ross is used to turning off emotions in the operating room, but hesitates when the man they were chasing is finally caught in a dead end alley. A slice across the neck is standard procedure. Trott reaches in and does it for him, and from there, the operation is easy.

     Their next couple marks are high on zydrate in their apartments or in alleys, and its easier for Ross to cut across their necks when they hardly can look at him straight, much less run or plead.

     Ross’ main issue is hesitating over different organ placements in a flatter chest, he just needs to convert his mind from animal anatomy to human. Smith knows more about physiology than he really needs for this job, he just needs to push away his squeamishness with killing people. Trott has everything he needs, he just needs to get rid of the two trainees he’s undoubtedly fed up with. 

     Its weeks until, in the locker room after a hard night’s work, Smith asks if he’d like to spend the night. Ross tilts his head at him, confused. Smith is quick to explain, “Well, see Trott and I just go back to mine most nights, fix up a bite and go to sleep. I guess you’re a part of this now so it feels weird without you there.”

     Ross accepts, and follows them to Smith’s apartment. Its in an expensive-looking high rise, and Smith excuses himself as Trott helps himself to the kitchen and starts cooking up spaghetti and sausages.

     Ross and Trott talk about the job, about Sips, about Smith, and neither of them mention the fact that Smith is taking his second shower of the night, and he’s been in there for 45 minutes before Trott goes to tell him dinner is ready.

     Smith’s couch is new and not broken in, and it is hard as a rock. Smith apologizes to him for not making up the guest room, but Ross waves him off. Smith’s bed is a tight fit for three, but they can all fit with no one in danger of falling off.

     Ross wakes up to Smith clutching his am, and lifts his head to see Trott spooning Smith. Their faces are peaceful and soft. Its still sort of odd to see them both without their helmets on. He imagines they feel the same about him. 

     The arrangement becomes a habit, and over the next couple weeks Smith invites him more and more often. Smith, forgetfully or intentionally, never gets around to making up the bed in the guest bedroom. 

     They split ways after breakfast each time, and Ross starts to regret taking a job that shifts his days around so drastically. His free time is in the afternoon, and daytime television is too contrived to be entertaining.

     Sips invites him to his office every so often, which breaks up the monotony. They talk about everything from how he’s adjusting to the job to the latest celebrity gossip. Sometimes all three of his team are there at the same time, and Ross wonders if this is some way of keeping tabs on this slow training trio.

     One day Sips bites the bullet and hands them their tablets of targets for the night, and says, “You guys won’t be working as a team from now on. You all know how to work well enough by now, right?” 

     It comes off as teasing, and Ross is struck, for the umpteenth time, by how casual and likable Sips truly is.

     Two of his targets are already dealt with by the time he tracks them down, and at another, he sees Trott, already operating. Ross groans from behind him, and Trott turns to face him, surprised. After a short exchange, (”What’s wrong, everything’s alright?” “Why are you here?” “Why are YOU here?”) they figure out that Sips had given them the same list.

     They call Smith to ask if he has the same list, and of course he does. They get back to SipsCo tower that night frustrated, but Smith is crowing that he got the most of the organs on their list. 

     The next afternoon, Sips laughs and laughs and finally chokes out, “I knew whoever won would rub it in your faces, I wish I could’ve seen it myself.”

     Sips, once again, gives them all the same lists and this time Trott wins. 

     That night at Smith’s, over beer and pizza, Ross complains that four of his marks were already done by the time he got there. They shove at each other playfully, and Ross and Trott’s faces are suddenly very close before they both back away quickly, looking away from each other. 

     Smith wolf whistles and Trott throws an empty can at him.


End file.
